Richard Marshall has put his hand up following three Super League defeats for Salford to admit that he and his team need to improve dramatically if they are to turn their season around.
The Red Devils coach was disappointed with his side’s display in a 42-6 defeat against Catalans Dragons and has promised an immediate response in training this week as he prepares for their next fixture against fellow strugglers Leigh Centurions on Friday.
“The game against Leigh is important for both clubs,” Marshall admitted following Saturday night’s match in Perpignan.
Both Leigh and Salford are winless from three rounds of Super League and Marshall is calling for rapid improvements from his players.
“We’ve let our supporters down; that was a really poor performance against Catalans,” he said.
“It’s not the required standard, nowhere near good enough for where we are at with this club and that is my responsibility.
“I obviously didn’t prepare the team in the right direction and I will be making sure that is fixed up this week.
“We are learning some tough lessons. We’ve played three tough teams and we’re the first team to come out to France, but at the same time we thought we would execute our plan a lot better than that.
“We were rattled and Catalans blew us away. We could have scored some points in that first half and then we just let the tyres down and deflated ourselves.
“We are making too many errors and we don’t want it to become a habit.”
Salford were the first team to travel to Perpignan since October last year because of Covid restrictions, but Marshall wasn’t using that as an excuse.
“I don’t think the travel is the problem, we just got on a plane instead of a bus.
“Our preparation was good and the club invested a lot of money in a private jet and the right food and facilities.
“At 20-0 down we were always going to be struggling. We need to start games a lot better with more intent and energy.
“We don’t need to change our whole game plan over the next few weeks, but there are certainly some areas we need to work on.
“We can’t be giving teams a head-start. Our second half performances over the last three weeks have seen us concede a lot of points.
“I pride myself on my defence and there is nothing positive to say about our defence in the second half of tonight’s game.
“There are some individuals who can hold their heads high, but Rugby League is a team game and you need every member of the team to be up to the task.”
Marshall promised an immediate review of the season so far in the build-up to Friday night’s crunch home match against the Centurions.
He added, “I won’t make any rash decisions, we will have to look at the dynamics of the team but we quite clearly aren’t playing well as a group.
“We put a few points past Widnes in the Challenge Cup but our Super League form is nowhere near and our ‘for and against’ is woeful.
“We’ll take a close look at a couple of players with knocks tonight. I had to bring Pauli Pauli off with an ankle injury. Elijah Taylor was fit to play, but we took him off towards the end to make sure he was fine and there was no recurrence of his shoulder injury. Kallum Watkins is receiving treatment on his hand. It was a very physical game.”
The above content is also available in the regular weekly edition of League Express, on newsstands every Monday in the UK and as a digital download. Click here for more details.
